As was mentioned, anything so freely available makes it basically valueless. It's like if we found a planet filled with fresh air, then... oh wait, our planet does have lots of fresh air and even though we need it to live, it has zero market value [at this point in time].

Of course, being on another planet isn't all that "freely available".

I always thought this kind of thing only exist in scifi stories. It's actually there now!

Assuming some alien race didn't sell it off 3000 years ago to fund their hyperspace engine project.

Damn, now it's gonna be even harder to impress girls with that American Diamond....

[quote name='Sirisian' timestamp='1314396654' post='4854225']
So umm 88 years at 1g acceleration if my math is right (though a 4G system would be possible). Sounds profitable. Hopefully in 160 years when someone leaves diamonds are still valuable and aren't all man made. I doubt ion thrusters would hold up, and getting clearance for a Project Orion vehicle is probably hard. Sigh too bad.

Uhm, doesn't the article say it's 4000 ly away ? You'd need some seriously exotic propulsion system to get there in only 88 years ;)
[/quote]
Wait was this comment because you don't know how special relativity works? If you travel with 1g acceleration you will get there in 88 years going extremely fast. People on earth would however have aged much much longer. Using a very "simple" Orion engine this is feasible. Nuclear propulsion though would be hard to get clearance. You could start your travel however at 1g using ion propulsion and nuclear propulsion then hope as thousands of years pass by that technology will enable you to get saved by a more advanced ship.

Does that 88 year figure include deceleration? Technically you could accumulate speed over time, but the trip will be wasted if you shoot past the destination at full speed.

If you travel with 1g acceleration you will get there in 88 years going extremely fast.

Even going "extremely fast", At some point you would hit the speed of light, and since nothing can travel faster than the speed of light the minimum amount of time this journey could take is 4000 years. Unless of course you generate or find some kind of wormhole.

Depends where you are observing! Observers on earth will see the ship travel for 4000 years. Travelers on the ship will experience time that is significantly shorter.

Why did I think this was about minecraft?

Wait was this comment because you don't know how special relativity works?

So basically, travelling considerably faster than the speed of light in a starship with non-zero mass (88 years of constant 1G would make you travel at roughly 100c) is only a matter of patience?

Does that 88 year figure include deceleration? Technically you could accumulate speed over time, but the trip will be wasted if you shoot past the destination at full speed.

Nope. To calculate that you can do:
2000 ly = 1/2 * 9.8 m/s^2 * t^2, solve for t and you get ~62 years. You'd spend the same time slowing down by rotating the ship and applying 1g the opposite way. So you'd be looking at 124 years for the total trip. Then again 1g acceleration is kind of slow since humans can endure 4g.

[quote name='Sirisian' timestamp='1314600119' post='4854959']
Wait was this comment because you don't know how special relativity works?

So basically, travelling considerably faster than the speed of light in a starship with non-zero mass (88 years of constant 1G would make you travel at roughly 100c) is only a matter of patience?
[/quote]
Been a while since I took physics 2, but this problem should be relatively simple given the constant acceleration.

First find the average velocity. This is simply (initial + final) / 2 aka (0 + 9.8 m/s^2 * 62 years) / 2 using a * t to calculate the final velocity. That gives us an average velocity of 9.58×10^9 m/s. Calculating the Lorentz Factor for time dilation you end up with 1 / sqrt(1 - (9.58×10^9 m/s)^2 / c^2) = 0.03131. Taking the reciprocal since we want the time relative to earth and you get a time dialation of 31.94. And 31.94 * our 62 years on the ship is 1980 years on earth basically 2000 years if I didn't use such poor precision in my calculations. That number looks familiar.

// edit by the way at the tolerable 4g you'd get there in 62 years. At 10g you'd be there in 40 years. If you could stomach 40g somehow you'd be there in 20 years. 50g's is the limit according to wikipedia that kills people. An unmanned ship could easily get there in a few years. Silly meatbags slow things down. Note to self put brain in computer...